Earth Stewardship

Graduate students in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines struggle with developing research agendas that balance the overall goals of their work with questions of civic concern. The Earth Stewardship Initiative helps to resolve this disparity. Furthermore, connecting STEM research to civic concerns increases the relevance of research and facilitates the development of cross‐disciplinary approaches. We describe how STEM graduate students can incorporate Earth Stewardship into their research, identify opportunities for educational institutions to support such research, and discuss the potential benefits of, and barriers to, linking Earth Stewardship to graduate‐level studies.

Maintaining the continued flow of benefits from science, as well as societal support for science, requires sustained engagement between the research community and the general public. On the basis of data from an international survey of 1092 participants (634 established researchers and 458 students) in 55 countries and 315 research institutions, we found that institutional recognition of engagement activities is perceived to be undervalued relative to the societal benefit of those activities. Many researchers report that their institutions do not reward engagement activities despite institutions’ mission statements promoting such engagement. Furthermore, institutions that actually measure engagement activities do so only to a limited extent. Most researchers are strongly motivated to engage with the public for selfless reasons, which suggests that incentives focused on monetary benefits or career progress may not align with researchers’ values. If institutions encourage researchers’...

South American coastal habitats include a wide range of benthic ecosystems, many of which are unique and constitute hotspots of biodiversity. Marine protected areas (MPAs), instituted mostly during the second half of the twentieth Century, are considered a key management tool to conserve regional biodiversity, prevent overexploitation, and generate economic benefits. Educational actions to promote changes in basic values, principles, and attitudes -although considered also as a main objective -frequently have a poor conceptual basis. In conjunction F. Berchez (

The designations employed and the presentation of material on the maps used in the assessment do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries. These maps have been prepared or used for the sole purpose of facilitating the assessment of the broad biogeographical areas represented therein.

The designations employed and the presentation of material on the maps used in the assessment do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries. These maps have been prepared or used for the sole purpose of facilitating the assessment of the broad biogeographical areas represented therein. 1 Authors are listed with, in parentheses, their country or countries of citizenship, separated by a comma when they have more than one; and, following a slash, their country of affiliation, if different from that or those of their citizenship, or their organization if they belong to an international organization. The countries and organizations having nominated the experts are listed on the IPBES website (except for contributing authors who were not nominated).

The designations employed and the presentation of material on the maps used in the assessment do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries. These maps have been prepared or used for the sole purpose of facilitating the assessment of the broad biogeographical areas represented therein.

The chapter assesses the role of nature’s diverse values in supporting social-ecological transformations towards more just and sustainable futures. This is approached as a two-fold and mutually complementing task: a) assessing the diverse values that have been considered in developing and creating visions for, and scenarios of the future, particularly those relating to more just and sustainable futures; and b) assessing how interventions to incorporate more plural valuation into decisions can serve as leverage points for enabling and governing transformation towards just and sustainable futures.
There is a substantial and well-established body of specialised literature on visions and scenarios of socio-ecological futures. A systematic review methodology was employed to assess the role of values and the types of values contained within this body of work. The protocol for this review operationalises the key concepts of “values of nature”, “justice” and “sustainability” elaborated within the wider values assessment and in this chapter. This review of published science is complemented with reviews of grey literature and creative arts.
The specialised literature on transformations and transitions to sustainability is comparatively recent and is diverse in terms of its primary concepts and units of analysis. For this reason, a two-stage process of literature review was adopted involving a) expert review to identify and synthesise the main concepts and relationships found in expert selected literatures followed by b) a systematic review using qualitative content analysis and c) a case study of how values are treated in National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans (NBSAP) interventions.
The decision-making typology and framework for the values assessment introduced in Chapter 1 is used as a basis for mapping governance forms and their associated characteristics (such as regime fit, scale and interplay, and the degree to which they – foster adaptiveness, knowledge co-production, and emergence of new actors) in the context of governing the uptake of diverse values of nature as part of a process of transformation towards just and sustainable futures.
These broader reviews and analyses are complemented by expert-led case studies exploring the role of values and valuation in four alternative pathways of transformation: green economy, degrowth, earth stewardship, and nature protection.